


evanesce

by kyouko



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyouko/pseuds/kyouko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment, there is everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	evanesce

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo this was written for a prompt by fluffytalon @ tumblr!!! it was supposed to be written two weeks ago but im a lame baby and only wrote this all out today. there's not really any plot and it's kinda confusin but hey i wrote something. i'm a big reincarnation dweeb in case you couldn't already tell and i've got a 7k word + reincarnation fic (scratches fuck yeah) coming up so look out for that!!! yeah
> 
> all and any feedback is welcome. my tumblr is mitsukin!

The train station smells of winter air and cigarette smoke and coffee, and he looks up briefly after hearing curt, short footsteps on the cool stone floor. There is a brief rustle of movement as someone sits next to him, and the exhale of breath, the little murmuring is too familiar to be a coincidence.

He looks up, and his breath catches in his throat, blue-green eyes widening.

For a moment, there is everything--a boy, bruised and bloodied, rising from the melted carcass and moon-white bones. 

There is a boy, green, tattered cape fluttering in the wind, a boy with battle written across his grim features and painted in the shocking blue-green hue of his eyes. A boy who stands, strong and steady like a pillar, the foundations of war and hope; a boy who wears the weight of the world on his thin shoulders.

And there is a man, a man who smells of stale cigarette smoke and the heat of battle, a man who wears remnants and ashes as clearly as the faded red on his cape. A man, a creature, an exotic beast born of battle and death itself, with a grey, silvery gaze that matches the sheen of glinting blades as he plunges into the chaos. 

A man with pale skin riddled with lightning-white scars, one scar for every life he's ever taken (or every life that's ever been taken from him). A man who shivers away slightly when warm, curious, inexperienced fingers press and trace gently and tenderly against every sharp curve, every jagged slant, every handprint of war--when a bright-eyed youth accepts the scars for what they are; a part of him. Nothing more, and nothing less. 

And then just as quickly there is nothing, only _nothing_ as the glimpses and memories and flashes melt back into the shadows, return to a place lifetimes ago.  
There is nothing--only two strangers on a bench, a boy with startling blue-green eyes (that are too innocent, too comfortable, too _naive_ to be _his_ ), a man with a flat grey gaze (and the boy turns, feels his heart drop a little when he realizes there are no scars, the hands he longs to take into his aren't the battle worn ones he remembers--or dreams of, what is the difference?).

And they are Humanity's Strongest and Hope, two twin soldiers dancing and marching faithfully on the barren wasteland, rusting and creaking but not broken, not shattered, not gone, not yet.  
And they are lovers (or something akin to that; two jagged edges of glass that fit together to form something not quite complete), bound, perhaps, by a single, long, red thread of fate that stretches and bends and molds but does not break.

And they are strangers, holding on to (grasping? reaching?) a fleeting moment of familiarity that disappears as quickly as it comes and leaves a hollow, gaping hole in its wake, a suffocating emptiness.

The boy stares; stares at the man he's known only in his dreams (and distant, distant life times) and it seems that the closer he gets to remembering, the closer his hands are to taking those in his, the brighter and clearer the memories are--the larger the emptiness grows. It expands and glows and convulses, a horrible, hungry, mass of a thing that will swallow him whole. 

His heart dips lower in his chest, falls on an iron crown of steel-pointed spikes that pierce and tear and rip until he's left light-headed, a terse, painful tightness left behind that whispers one word: _lonely._

"Hey, kid." He whips his head around and the man reaches his arm out, to do something, anything--and then stops abruptly, hesitantly, pale arm still outstretched. It is unmarred, unscarred, unfamiliar and familiar all at once, a piece of the past molded and burnt into something entirely different and frightening. The boy raises a trembling hand and is only mildly surprised by the cold wetness on his cheeks.

"Why are you crying?"

There is a softness to his grey gaze, a genuine concern on the moonlight paleness of his skin. 

And he searches, stares into the storm-grey, blade-silver eyes, looking for something, _anything,_ any hint of familiarity, anything to let him know that he _remembers,_ that he isn't crazy--

Nothing. There is nothing. No uncertain flicker of recognition, and the gaze that meets his is too different, too vast, too _wrong_ and he thinks bitterly that it would have been better if they'd never meet here in the first place, if he'd just let him slip past so they would be what they were; two strangers in a crowd.

A strangled sob brushes past his lips. The fragments of his dream fall away quickly and leave nothing behind but a coldness that worms into his heart and bones, a coldness that tightens his chest and leaves him almost breathless.

"I don't know," because he _doesn't_ and his voice is small and thin and shivery in the cool air of the train station, small and loud and echoic.  
Letting out a shaky breath, he slumps forward, unable to ignore the long, steady streaks of tears on his cheeks or the foreboding feeling that both of them are forgetting some time, something, someone important. "I don't know."

He can taste the name on the tip of his tongue and it tastes as familiar and as bitter as blood.  
It doesn't fall from his lips until a train finally rushes in and the man rises and boards the it before sparing him one last, worried glance (another one that stabs needles further into his heart and makes his muscles tighten and stomach drop because this isn't the one, this isn't the one he remembers, isn't the one he's searching for but _is_ and goddamnit you were right here but you weren't mine, not here, not now--)

" _Levi_ ," he breathes, minutes too late ( _too late too late always too late like last time when you found him lying there, limbs bent and broken and odd _) and the name fades just as quickly as it comes to mind.__


End file.
